Children, Social Media, and the Law: Can the Australian Ban Become a Global Standard?

Australia’s 2024 ban on social media access for children under 16 represents one of the most radical attempts to address the growing mental health risks associated with digital platforms. While politically compelling, the ban exposes significant legal and practical limitations of absolute age-based restrictions. The European Union’s regulatory approach suggests that long-term protection is more effectively achieved by regulating platform design and practices rather than excluding children from the digital information space.

Social media has become an integral part of the daily lives of children and adolescents and a significant factor influencing their mental health, identity development, and social relationships. In recent years, scientific literature has increasingly linked intensive and uncontrolled use of social media with higher levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms, body image disturbances, and exposure to digital violence. As a result, regulating children’s access to social media is increasingly viewed not only as an issue of digital policy but also as a matter of public health.

In this context, the Australian legislative reform of 2024, which introduced a general ban on access to social media for persons under the age of 16, represents one of the most radical regulatory interventions at the global level. This measure has triggered intense international debate regarding the limits of permissible state intervention, the role of digital platforms, and the possibility of establishing a universal model for protecting children in the digital environment.

The Australian Model: Normative Clarity and Implementation Dilemmas

Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 obliges social media service providers to prevent persons under the age of 16 from creating and using user accounts. Responsibility for implementing this measure rests exclusively with the platforms, with substantial financial penalties for non-compliance. The primary objective of the Act is to protect children’s mental health, reduce exposure to harmful content, and limit the effects of manipulative business models designed to maximize user engagement and retention.

Although the Act is politically and symbolically strong, its implementation raises a number of legal and practical concerns. Effective age verification in the digital environment almost inevitably requires additional user identification, which may result in increased processing of personal data and new privacy risks, including risks to children’s privacy. Furthermore, experience with existing age restrictions shows that minors often circumvent them by providing false information or using adult accounts, thereby reducing the actual protective effect of the ban. This raises the question of whether a general age-based prohibition, in and of itself, can achieve the intended goals of protecting children’s mental health.

European Union Law: Protecting Children Without Absolute Exclusion

Unlike the Australian model, the legal framework of the European Union is based on the principle of proportionality and on balancing the protection of children with the preservation of fundamental rights. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union stipulates that the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all policies affecting them, while simultaneously guaranteeing freedom of expression, the right to access information, and the right to privacy—rights that also apply to minors.

Within this framework, the Digital Services Act (DSA) does not introduce general age-based bans on access to social media. Instead, it establishes a regulatory model based on the assessment and mitigation of systemic risks posed by digital platforms to society, including specific risks to minors. Platforms are required to adapt their algorithmic systems, ensure a high level of privacy by default, and prohibit targeted advertising based on the profiling of children.

Similarly, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces enhanced protection for children’s personal data, without prohibiting their access to digital services. Article 8 of the GDPR provides for parental consent for the processing of children’s data up to a certain age, thereby recognizing the developmental dynamics of the child and enabling gradual participation in digital society with additional protective safeguards.

This approach reflects a regulatory philosophy that seeks to protect children without fully excluding them from the digital environment.

Towards a Universally Acceptable Legal Solution

A comparison of the Australian and European approaches shows that a general age-based ban is normatively simple but difficult to sustain as a global model. A universally acceptable solution must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate different legal systems while also being robust enough to effectively protect children’s mental health.

Such a model would not be based on an absolute prohibition but rather on minimum global standards: enhanced platform responsibility for designing safe digital environments for children; a ban on the commercial exploitation of minors through profiling and targeted advertising; age-graded forms of protection; and systematic involvement of parents and education as part of public health policy. In this way, child protection would be embedded within the structure of digital services themselves, rather than imposed through external and difficult-to-enforce bans.

Conclusion

Australia’s ban on access to social media for individuals under the age of 16 represents a strong political response to genuine risks to children’s mental health, but it also reveals serious legal and practical shortcomings of absolute age-based restrictions. The experience of the European Union demonstrates that a more sustainable long-term approach is one that regulates the conduct of platforms, rather than restricting children’s access to the information space.

Protecting children in the digital environment is increasingly emerging as a global public health issue. In this context, effective regulation must not be reduced to simple bans but should instead create safe, supervised, and developmentally appropriate digital spaces in which children can participate without jeopardizing their mental health or fundamental rights.